The most unique game modes, and the ones most suited to Multiwinia's inimitable style, are Rocket Riot and Assault. In Rocket Riot, players fight to man solar panels in a race to fuel their team's giant rocket. The action constantly shifts back and forth as factions shuffle forces to and from panel farms, struggling to prepare the craft for liftoff. Assault pits large waves of attackers against well-entrenched defenders with walls, turrets and chokepoints but few reinforcements. Kill counts range in the thousands as attacking forces throw their unending numbers against the defenders in an attempt to reach and destroy a WMD before the defenders can activate it.
Unsurprisingly (and wisely), Introversion has preserved the series' charming design aesthetic. The Multiwinians themselves are little more than flat, two-dimensional sprites sliding about low-polygon, grid-covered islands and shooting tiny lasers at each other. Meanwhile, ships shaped like the aggressors in Space Invaders carry out bombing runs. Introversion has also incorporated subtle nods to their other strategy title, Defcon: Everyone Dies into Multiwinia, with nuclear strikes fired from the former's submarine-shaped icons and the missiles' trajectories traced by elegant dotted-line arcs.
Multiwinia's sound effects are particularly well-done. Laser beams come complete with "pew-pew" noises, and grenades explode with a strong bass rumble. Then there's the Multiwinians' tragic death screams. Crowds of tiny troops whimper and yell as they're shot, blown up, set on fire and generally slaughtered. In some crucial ways, Multiwinia's sound design establishes a stronger emotional connection with the on-screen carnage than some gory AAA first-person shooters. Perhaps simplicity breeds empathy, but in any case I felt more guilty sending mobs of rudimentary sprites into the teeth of rapid-fire gun turrets than I ever have realistically gibbing an opponent's face with a flak cannon.
Unfortunately, great visual design doesn't cover up awkward gameplay. As in its predecessor, players control Multiwinia's camera with the shooter-style WASD key arrangement, while controlling altitude and rotation by mouse. This control scheme was fairly effective in Darwinia, but with the additional management the sequel requires, locking the mouse to the camera forces you to constantly fling your viewpoint back and forth between multiple fronts. Multiwinia also maintains Darwinia's brain-dead pathfinding, so officers are as much a necessity as a convenience. In short, Darwinia's interface simply can't keep up with Multiwinia's pace.
The lack of traditional RTS features like drag-box selection, focus-fire and group hotkey assignments also makes running a larger engagement an exercise in frantic movement and crude mob-rush tactics. Matches without a time limit can quickly bog down into bloody stalemates, as territories are often separated by solitary bridges turned mass graveyards. (Multiwinians can't swim.) Even game-altering crates like nuclear strikes can't always clear a bridgehead long enough for one side to gain the upper hand.
Bottom line: At the expense of Multiwinia's long-term viability as an RTS game, Introversion has given fans exactly what they wanted: a multiplayer version of Darwinia.
Verdict: Buy it. Multiwinia is dirt cheap, looks great, oozes character and is a riot to play for as long as it lasts.
